Bluebirds Nest in Your Yard the Spring You Put These Up

Bluebirds are cavity nesters locked out by starlings and sparrows, and the cute painted birdhouse is a trap - wrong hole, no ventilation, no way to clean. A real box is engineered: inch-and-a-half hole starlings cannot pass, deep floor, side door for monitoring, no perch peg for predators to sit on.

Mount facing an open lawn - bluebirds hunt from perches over short grass.

A box nailed to a fence post or tree is a snake and raccoon buffet with a scenic entrance - most nest failures are climbing predators, not weather. A smooth steel pole with a stovepipe baffle is the arrangement bluebird societies insist on, because nothing climbs past it.

Five feet of grass around the pole; overhanging branches are a leap pad.

Bluebirds eat insects and berries, so the sunflower feeder might as well be furniture - a small dish of mealworms under a dome is the feeder they learn in a week. The dome keeps rain off and bullies out, and a whistled signal at refill time trains them to arrive on cue within a season.

Feed a few dozen a day as a supplement, more only in ice storms.

The little sacks at the garden center cost triple per ounce of the bulk bag, and a resident bluebird family goes through a startling volume by fledge week. Dried worms keep for a year in the bag; a soak in warm water plumps them into nestling-grade food each morning.

Soaked beats dry in nesting season - nestlings get their water from food.

The bluebirds deciding where to nest in March are the ones that survived February nearby, and open water in a freeze is the rarest resource in the county. A thermostatic heated bath runs pennies a day and makes your yard the wintering site - by spring, the box outside is simply the obvious address.

Shallow with a rock to stand on; deep baths are for nobody.